Alzheimer’s Association Reorganizing for Planned Expansion

As part of an ambitious ten-year plan, the Chicago-based is looking to ramp up its operations, double its fundraising revenue, and combine all its affiliates into a single entity, the reports.

Launched in 2014, the plan establishes a number of priorities for the largest nonprofit funder of Alzheimer's research in the country, including making fundraising an association-wide priority, with the goal of doubling the organization's revenue to $450 million by 2019; conducting dedicated research campaigns across the country; increasing awareness of the disease and the organization's policy efforts; and exploring and testing opportunities for fundraising in other countries. The association also is working to more tightly integrate its fifty-four "traditional" chapters into the national organization. Since 2012, the number of national chapters has increased by eleven, to twenty-seven, which includes some of the twenty chapters that have dissolved, disaffiliated, or been assumed by the national organization since 2011.

According to NPT, similar consolidations have occurred at the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, where thirteen ACS divisions were combined into a single entity — a restructuring that led to a wave of employee buyouts and the suspension of the organization's direct mail acquisition program, among other changes.

"The mission and vision stays same. The strategic plan remains. And the concept of the chapter network remains. That's key. For donors, for people who have the disease and their caregivers, what we're trying to do stays the same," said Stewart Putnam, chair of the national board of the Alzheimer's Association. "There's nothing about this that moves away from the robust chapter network we have."